Substrat: "do first things first - and second things not at all."
what is considered excellent is often a pale shadow of the true potential
The less an organization does to produce results, the better it does its job.
What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions.
two mediocrities achieve less than one—they get in each other’s way.
Unless one has considered alternatives, one has a closed mind.
Definitions:
Effectiveness: get the right things done.
Efficiency: do things right.
Executives: knowledge workers/managers/individual professionals who are expected to make decisions that have significant impact on the performance and results of the whole.
Time wasters: overstaffing, malorganisation, malfunction in information
Effective executives 1) know where their time goes, 2) focus on outward contribution, 3) build on strenghts, 4) concentrate on areas where performance produces outsized results, 5) make effective decisions.
Knowledge work: "(...) cannot be supervised closely or in detail. [The knowledge worker] can only be helped."
Since the knowledge worker directs himself, he must understand what achievement is expected of him and why.
zero drafts: block a significant amount of time at the start.
trim activities: systematic sloughing off of the old is the one way to force the new.
"We rightly consider keeping many balls in the air a circus stunt. Yet even the juggler does it only for ten minutes or so. If he were to try doing it longer, he would soon drop all the balls."